Supreme Court: The questioning of Elena Kagan has been mostly laughs and smiles. Republicans are letting image and empathy win out over substance, and that's no laughing matter.

Supreme Court confirmation hearings have degenerated into slick TV entertainment. Millions of viewers seeking real scrutiny of President Obama's choice instead heard light banter about how New York Mets fan Kagan might get along with Yankees fan Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (Answer: They'll be too busy working together with fellow liberal New Yorker Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg against the court's conservative male justices to talk baseball.)

They also heard Kagan's jokey answer to a question from Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., about the Christmas Day bomber. "Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant" that day, she said.

Graham even hinted that Kagan may have secured his vote by saying that her longtime friend, the much-maligned Judge Miguel Estrada, was qualified to sit on the Supreme Court — proving what little it takes for a liberal nominee to bag a stray GOP senator.

These hearings have become valueless. Last year, Sotomayor assured the committee she supported the Supreme Court's Heller decision in support of the Second Amendment's individual gun rights.

"Is it safe to say that you accept the Supreme Court's decision as establishing that the Second Amendment right is an individual right? Is that correct?" Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked her. "Yes, sir," Sotomayor replied.

But fast-forward to this week and the McDonald v. Chicago ruling just handed down and we find Sotomayor joining a dissent that says,"I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."

Sotomayor now believes that "examination of the Framers' motivation tells us they did not think the private armed self-defense right was of paramount importance."

She further holds that "Unlike the First Amendment's rights of free speech, free press, assembly and petition, the private self-defense right does not comprise a necessary part of the democratic process that the Constitution seeks to establish."

In other words, when it comes to the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment belongs in the back of the bus. If baseball players who lie to Congress about steroid use get into legal hot water, shouldn't Sotomayor for misleading senators on the Second Amendment?

GOP senators are once again mostly playing dead.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Wednesday let Leahy wow him with the flattering text of conservative former appellate judge and Stanford law professor Michael McConnell's endorsement of Kagan.

"That's high praise indeed," Hatch gushed.

Similarly, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., was reduced to pleading with Kagan to reread the Federalist Papers, giving her an opportunity to appear to be the epitome of moderation by vowing to do so.

In truth, Kagan seems more fascinated with the authority of foreign law than that of the Framers.

On Tuesday, she told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that in "narrow circumstances" on a "limited number of issues," there are "some cases where citation of foreign law or international law would be appropriate" because a judge should "look for good ideas wherever they come from."

There's a lot at stake here. GOP senators should have stopped yukking it up and started questioning this lady in a serious way.

If they had, they'd find that Elena Kagan lacks any experience as a judge, shows every sign of being a liberal judicial activist and refused to answer question after question — yet seems set to slide through to a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land.